The subject matter disclosed herein generally relates to environmental control systems and, more particularly, to pack-and-a-half architectures for environmental control systems.
Commercial aircraft are conventionally equipped with two-pack environmental control system architectures that include redundant packs installed in separate bays beneath a center wing box of the aircraft and are encapsulated by the aircraft wing-to-body fairing. These bays are commonly separated by a Keel Beam that supports the weight of the aircraft in the event of a wheels-up landing. Local penetrations of the keel beam can be accommodated if properly reinforced.
Smaller configurations of environmental control system architectures can include pack-and-a-half architectures that fit within a single volume. However, such volume is larger than half of the convention two-pack architectures, and thus the pack-and-a-half architecture systems may be too large for use in such locations, and thus may be required to be installed in other locations of the aircraft (e.g., in a tail cone of the aircraft). It may be beneficial to further reduce the size of pack-and-a-half environmental control system architectures.